


The Surly Bonds of Earth

by spacego



Series: Speaking of Love in Songs and Verse [2]
Category: Alexander (2004)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7962604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacego/pseuds/spacego
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander discovers that Hephaistion has been sleeping around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Surly Bonds of Earth

**Author's Note:**

> So many warnings, I don't even know where to start.  
> This is a departure for me. This is me trying my hand at writing with present tense, writing about acceptable promiscuity (is there even?), writing about flying and standing still, or just an exploration of friendship or duty.  
>   
> It may not be correct historically. And it is truly not correct biologically/geographically. For instance, hummingbirds as far as I know only exists in the Americas, so there's very little chance of encountering it in the Old World. It is perhaps better if I use something like a Pied Kingfisher, though even this one will be stretching it. And let's not start about seasons and weather. Worse still, what is considered period-appropriate social mores?  
>   
> But reality is there to be suspended, isn't it? Especially in writing exercises.
> 
> It's going to be odd, to say the least, but let me know what you think anyway.

 

**  . i fall, i rise .  **

"What do you think?" he asks his bedmate, shoving a piece of carved wood under the sleepy man's nose.

"The beak is too long for its head, don't you think?" the answer is slurred and lazy.

"Not really. Actually, I've seen it, the beak is even longer than its whole body," he laughs, as he take his blade to the wood again, littering wood chips onto a square of waxed linen placed over the fur blanket covering his lower half.

"What is it called?"

"I don't know. I haven't asked," he answers after a while. "It buzzes like a fly though, with its beak inside a trumpet flower."

"You see the oddest things on your scouting missions, general," comes a sleepy observation.

"It's only a bird."

When no retort is forthcoming, Hephaistion busies himself again with his small piece of wooden sculpture. He supposes that it's not a very good idea to do such a thing in bed. It's almost as messy as eating in bed, which he refuses to do, but it helps him think and clear his mind. The repetitive movements soothe him, peeling back layers after layers of wood, watching them drift lazily down. There's only an occasional need to concentrate, so he doesn't chop off a finger.

It helps him think, and sometimes not to think. And it helps him waste his time. Sleep seems to be eluding him lately. He feels restless, even though he has been going on missions nonstop, and other work in between. He would've even foregone the bed quite easily; now that he doesn't drink, he's not sleepy anymore. But he knows that if he doesn't slow down, he might put himself into a disadvantage; he might let tiredness breed into mistake, which is unconscionable. Alexander is riding the army hard to flush out what's left of the belligerents and secure his rear, so he can finally make a push to the Hindus.

The first light of dawn comes soon enough. His bird carving looks a bit better now, more like the bird he saw in the forests. Although, the bird had been flapping its wings so frantically he didn't catch the shape of its wings. He hopes they are not a botfly's wings.

The body next to him stirs, then fingers rubbing sleep off tired eyes. A yawn and a rustle.

There's a hidden door in his room, its seams obscured under some murals; the Persians who built the palace sure knew what they're doing, he thinks. It opens as expected. He looks up and sees Bagoas poking his head through the slight opening. _It's time._ He nods and offers a smile which is returned. The door stays ajar, just a little, but the darkness from beyond the door seeps in just a little. Bagoas never steps through, waiting in the dark though he has been told many times that he doesn't have to.

Sighing, Hephaistion places his blade on the table next to the bed, and gathers the four corners of his linen square, bundling wood shavings together and tying the four ends to make a pouch which he places next to the blade. Someone will empty the contents later. His bird carving tumbles onto the mattress and his bedmate catches it.

Hephaistion looks at the bird nestled in those hands, and looks up to expectant eyes. "Do you want it?" he asks at last, not knowing what else to say.

"You don't mind?"

"No," Hephaistion replies, then he thinks he sounded flippant though he doesn't mean to. "I mean... it's not very good. I've never carved this bird before, and I'm not even sure I got the wings right," he says, his mouth feels cottony all of a sudden, followed by a sense of self-effacement that surprises even him. "I'll make you a better one."

"No, this is fine." Fingers envelop the small bird carefully. A shifting of sheets, and he watches almost dispassionately, but also with trepidation. There's a light kiss that descends upon his lips, but there's also a sense of defiance behind the touch. "I won't see you again, will I?" it's a rhetorical question.

"I'm sure we'll see each other," Hephaistion tries to make it sound light. "The palace is big, but not that big. And we're heading out soon. The camp is small enough." When he is anxious, he babbles. Like someone losing his sanity. Maybe he has lost the plot a while back.

"No. Like this. I mean, see each other like this. Here. Or a camp bed?"

"No," he sounds so defeated even to his own ears. "Not like this." A sigh. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for." A laugh, and then silence. "I'll keep the bird. A keepsake."

He tries to think of something to say. _I wish it doesn't have to be like this. I wish it doesn't have to end this way. Will you think of it as poor recompense? Will you think bad of me?_   He hides his insecurity behind a lame "Thank you." He watches the dawn does what it always do through his window, lengthening a person's shadow until it snaps at the neck.

The hidden door opens a bit wider, then it closes. Another secret gone into the darkness. _Thank you for the conversation. Thank you for the companionship. I hope you understand._  So many things that he wants say. "I'm sorry," he tells the air, the empty spaces, and the rising sun.

He lingers in his bed, because last night was only about conversation. Light and pointless. And even then, not so much. It's not so often now that he can just sit in silence and while away the night watching the march of stars. To just stay still. It's an indulgence nowadays.

He rises from his bed just as the door opens. The other door, the one that opens to the hallway, to the light, and to everyone else.

"Well, time waits for no sleeping man, Hephaistion!" Alexander barges in like the Macedonian sunburst made into flesh and blood. He propels himself to Hephaistion's side of the bed and toys with the blade left there. "So what did you make this time?"

Hephaistion ignores him as he pushes his face into the waiting washing basin, letting water drown out the sound.

"Nothing," he says, resurfacing. "Was so lost in thought, got nothing but a pile of splinters."

Alexander pokes the bundle of wood shavings with a finger. "What were you trying to make?"

"Something." He takes his time washing himself, and there's a long stretch of companionable silence. "I don't know." He shrugs, turning his gaze to the window and watches the sun rises. "Say, Alexander."

"Hmmm?"

"Why don't you go first? I'll visit the kitchens and see you at the stables?"

"How about I go to the kitchen, and I'll see you at the stables?"

Hephaistion makes a show of choosing his riding cloak, even though he has only two. Alexander takes his silence as acceptance, and drops a kiss on one bare shoulder before leaving as he came--with a burst of energy. Fresh as anything, his Alexander, who is always up with the sun, who never misses a morning ride even after a hard night.

 

* * *

 

 **. i laugh, i cry .**  

When he decided to turn back, when he decided to listen to counsel, when he decided to stop warring and start consolidating, he thought that the losses would stop. But turning back, stopping, and consolidating seem to do nothing for him but threaten to take away the only one that matters. Because the gods are masters of irony, he supposes.

And so Alexander foregoes his morning ride and breakfast by the brook, which is no hardship because doing those things without companionship isn't very pleasurable.

He goes, instead, to the small temple of Asclepius on the palace grounds. To beg for Hephaistion's health that seems to have deteriorated since they arrived in Ecbatana for the games.

There are no grand temples for Greek Gods yet in the whole forsaken city, but Alexander will build grand ones for each of them and put whole nations into forced labor to build them in a night if Hephaistion can be cured. He feels helpless.

He doesn't expect to see the foot of the modest altar brimming with woodcarvings. There are dozens of them, easily a hundred.

They are carving of birds, different types of wood, different types of birds. Eagles, hawks, vultures... he almost laughs when he realizes he recognizes the birds of prey first and foremost. Most of them with outstretched wings, legs tucked midflight. He imagines all of them flying, if they're not trapped in their heavy wooden forms.

"They all love him," a voice comes from behind him. "Maybe not love," a thoughtful pause. "But they are loyal. As he is loyal to you." The voice becomes more insistent, though no louder than a desperate whisper to respect the solemnity of the temple. "Please do not be angry at him."

Only then does Alexander look around, until he sees a man kneeling in a shadowy bend of the altar. The man, who is dressed to be one of his soldiers, smiling wryly at him. Alexander imagines that the man has tears in his eyes, or maybe those eyes are bright from the candles and the rising sun beyond.

Fascinated, Alexander watches the man taking his time to make a gesture of prayer, placing a small carved bird to join the rest. Which makes him wonder whether wooden birds are customary prayer gifts to Asclepius. He's not sure it is.

Alexander can't see the newest addition properly, hidden among the shadow of others, but it has a small round body, and a long thin beak, like a curved needle.

"It's only conversation most of the time. Just talk, nothing important, Mostly silence. Some very rare times, there would be comfort offered to us and to him also, so he may escape. So we may," the man says, foreign voice, face shrouded in shadows. He doesn't know this soldier, might never recognize him in a sea of faces.

Alexander wants to ask, because he doesn't understand what the man's talking about. He can't even begin to understand, even though the man talks like he thinks Alexander knows something. But the man has moved away quickly, before Alexander can even form a thought. At the threshold of the temple, the man gives his salute grimly, and runs out as fast as dignity allows.

Carved birds catch his attention once more. Some better than others, some more charming due to their crude simplicity. Different types of wood, different types of birds. But they might be by the same hand. Alexander puts it in the back of his mind, like he always does with a good conundrum, and goes in search of a priest to arrange for a sacrifice.

******

Alexander stands in the threshold of the bedroom, quite dumbfounded, watching Hephaistion whittling away at a piece of wood while healers and doctors and servants bustle around his sickbed.

He feels a lump forming in his throat and his discreet effort at clearing it only manages to draw attention to him. The sedate activity in the room stops immediately, and Alexander covers the sudden turmoil rushing through his veins with a stern wave of his hand. The kind of movement that would cut down men and elephants if he were holding a sword.

Everyone leaves, except for the sick man on the bed, who looks at him with wide eyes. There's a linen square on his lap, and the shape of bird forming in his hands under his blade. It is not ready yet, it can't fly without feathers in its wings.

Realization comes to him like one of Father Zeus's lighting bolts. Perhaps he is wrong, but he is seldom wrong about the one who holds his heart. It's heady, the feeling, almost too much that it blinds him. It almost takes him out at the knees. He might be dying, he thinks dramatically.

When is it ever not disconcerting to learn that your lover is the proverbial camp whore?

 

* * *

 

 **. i live , i die .**  

Eternity stretches between the few steps and few seconds that separates them.

Hephaistion waits defiantly for Alexander to form his words, already knowing what he's going to say. He would be lying if he says he hasn't been waiting for this day to arrive. So he waits. Patiently. He isn't the one going anywhere, he thinks.

"Did you sleep with all of them?" Alexander finally asks, fire in his voice, but his face betrays his bewilderment, like he doesn't know whether to laugh or scream or both.

"No, not all of them," Hephaistion replies, himself marveling at the lazy sort of bravado in his voice. Is his fever getting into his head?

Or perhaps, because he knows Alexander well. Alexander of the big bleeding heart. They will weather it, he is sure. And the day is going to be beautiful--the sky outside his window is cloudless. Perhaps today, the doctors will let him venture out.

He sweeps wood chips onto his linen square, deliberate in his slowness, as if to bide time. He ties off the four corners and the bundle goes with the bird and the blade on the table by his bed. Alexander hovers by the side of his bed, as though waiting for something. Taking pity on the man, Hephaistion reaches out and touches a knuckle lightly, watches as Alexander all but drops onto the far side of the bed. As far as possible without being across the room, or indeed across the continent.

"It's just empty talk." Like birthdays and funerals, missing home or running away from it, belligerent husbands and hotheaded wives. Little things of the heart and hearth. He's not picky. A lonely man can't afford to be.

Alexander is quiet, he wants to ask what they are like, how they look, what they talk about. Equally, he wishes to stay in the dark. If ignorance is bliss, why is it that he feels so unseated?

"No state secrets, don't worry," Hephaistion says again, deliberately misjudging Alexander's demeanor. They both know Hephaistion won't betray the kingdom, his king. "And no bastard children, I assure you." Sees his attempt at levity fails rather spectacularly.

Hephaistion likes to write in bed, even though it spreads ink and broken bits of dried papyrus everywhere. Alexander had had a writing tray made, with slots for inks, waters, and styluses, clay tablets, and papyrus, and the debris still got everywhere. But he can't write when it's not Alexander next to him. He can't chance it, can't trust that he won't write something incriminating and have it read by others. Which has led him to his wood and blade. Wooden birds don't sing. They don't fly away.

"Sometimes we hold hands or share a kiss. On rare occasions, a bit more." Sometimes they hold secrets from each other, but they only tell the truth. "Just friendly company, Alexander," he doesn't lie, and Alexander doesn't doubt. "Never twice the same person, though."

He is afraid of creating emotional attachments, Alexander knows. Come back for more, and one day, you find yourself unable to let go. And yet, almost paradoxically, Hephaistion thrives on companionship--a room with his brother and Athenian cousins when they were younger, then dormitories and barracks. On campaigns he can often be found spending the night in the common tents with his troops. Not for the first time, Alexander wonders about this odd brand of attachment, of being around people but distanced from them at the same time. Of being close to people and yet remain so removed.

He likes people, and he is a good judge of them. But he craves silence, and doesn't trust anyone at all. Is it natural for Hephaistion to be this way, or is this yet another price to pay for loving a king?

Alexander feels like clawing out of his own skin with this sudden knowledge of how little he knows about the person he has shared most of his life with. Had he known before but has somehow forgotten?

He wonders why he is so distressed by this realization. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind, wonders why Hephaistion can sit there and take everything in with an air of cold detachment and only a little resignation.

He wants to yell, or break things. There are many things he wants to ask. But in the end Alexander settles for, "Here?" as though it makes any difference.

"It's as good a place as any," Hephaistion replies, shrugging. Since his Persian handlers began forcing large stately, ornately decorated offices on him wherever he goes, he never keeps papers in his rooms anymore. "I'm too old to sneak around the palace. And it's unbecoming of the station you have forced upon me." There's mirth in his eyes, crinkling at the sides in amusement.

"They come to you?"

 _When I'm not with you_ , Hephaistion doesn't say. "Bagoas kindly plays ferryman," he says instead. It's a good system they have, he must admit.

"He knows this place," Alexander says, casting a glance at where he thinks the secret door would be.

"That he does," comes the fond reply, and a small nod confirming the existence of the door.

"What is this supposed to be?" For the first time that day, Alexander brushes his hand along Hephaistion's as he reaches across the bed and takes the half-made bird into his own hand. When he straightens up, he lines up his body against Hephaistion's, now aware of the fever heat that radiates like a persistent bad dream.

"The Persians call it a simurgh. A phoenix. Bagoas tries to describe it to me, and lately Drypetis as well. They have different opinions about the thing. My pages don't care as much. They just want to know what color I'm going to give it. The servants go on and on about splinters."

Wood splinters everywhere, he sighs, even when his servants have changed all the sheets and covers. Sometimes, he feels them piercing his skin, or wedging themselves under his nails. Maybe one day they will get into his eyes, and he will become blind and gets left behind.

Alexander doesn't seem to be listening, tipping the bird back and forth between his two hands.

Who is it for? Alexander doesn't ask.

Hephaistion will die a thousand deaths and be reborn into his thousand different roles, but perhaps he will never fly. The rank and file, the camp followers, the officers and commanders, generals and companions may argue, resign, leave, build families away from court, write to him about their life as a farmer, or merchant, or just about anything on their own paths in life toward death.

"Do you sometimes begrudge me for tying you down?"

Hephaistion laughter is so loud and abrupt that it comes out like a bark. He looks at his king with a grin that asks, are you a big idiot?

Raising his hands, palms out, Alexander grins back. They lace their fingers together listening to life unfolding outside the bedroom windows. 

Hephaistion idly wonders if he is really dying or even already dead. Because surely this kind of forgiveness only comes with death. He blinks and banishes his morbid thoughts. The gods have given him a gift this day, and by the gods he will enjoy it.

"I miss having you in my bed like this," he says instead, absently running his thumb over a raised vein along the back of Alexander's hand. "But your bed is better," he adds quickly when he catches a look of distress that falls across Alexander's face. "Bigger. More comfortable," he embellishes, with a wiggle of an eyebrow that triggers a blinding headache.

He knows Alexander notices; those fingers tightening around his. But he is grateful that Alexander doesn't make a fuss of it, allowing him the space to ride the waves of it in his own time.

There's someone else in the room with them, someone putting something cold on his brows. It can't be Alexander who does all these things, because he can feel Alexander's exhalations against his fevered skin, those familiar fingers around his, anchoring him to reality. He feels like his skull has been split open by a wicked scimitar but he finds that he doesn't half care about it. Not when he hears Alexander talking to him about something that he cannot decipher.

When he opens his eyes again, there's only Alexander in the room. The sun is so high up in the sky it is piercingly bright.

"Why are you still here?" he asks, turning away from the sun. Alexander pretends not to hear him.

"Say, what is that bird, the one with the long thin beak?" Alexander asks instead.

There's a cheer coming out from the distance, filtering its way through gauze curtains. Alexander is supposed to be out there, attending the games. He should loosen his fingers, Hephaistion thinks, tell him to go. But the selfish part of him holds on, almost greedily hoarding the vital staccato beating of Alexander's heart underneath his ear.

It lulls him to sleep. "I don't know. It's only a bird."

  
****

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a line from "[High Flight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.#High_Flight)" by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. 
> 
> "[Manteq at-Thair (A Conference of Birds)](http://thekingdomwithin.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The_Conference_of_the_Birds_Fardiuddin_Attar.pdf)" by Farid ud-din Attar 
> 
> This strange, magnetic force,  
> That holds God’s ancient lovers to their course.  
> Before the smallest of such need,  
> the sun is dim and murky by comparison.  
> \--It is life’s strength, the wings by which we fly,  
> Beyond the further reaches of the sky. 
> 
>  
> 
> "Au Dela" by Morcheeba ([music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw9sduiOn5I), [lyrics](http://copia.posthaven.com/chez-labbe-au-dela-de-la-terre))
> 
> I bury myself secretly,  
> I flee the air, go beyond this earth.  
> In the all-colored sky,  
> It is your sun that warms my heart.


End file.
